The Compromised Detective

by Pirate Irwin

  “Indeed I would go so far as to say that I did some things that were contrary to the spirit that reigned at the time in the Quai and led to my being dismissed from the police force by the then general-secretary René Bousquet.”

  Pinault looked disapprovingly at Lafarge, which at first disappointed him but then he recalled his interrogator, while a decent man, was one who would not abide any disobeying of orders no matter what they were or who gave them. All that mattered to someone like Pinault was that the police force functioned properly and in orderly fashion.

  “Yes, indeed. I heard about that. You assaulted a senior officer of the uniformed police, a Captain Monnet, and had him arrested. No matter how despicable his duties were that day he was simply following procedure and orders. Little wonder you were dismissed,” said Pinault crossly.

  Lafarge was furious at this and made to intervene only for Pinault to wave his protest aside and press on.

  “You were thereupon a few months later reinstated at your own request, having brought your father’s then considerable influence to bear. The question gnawing away at me is what was so important that it changed your mind about returning to a police force that you had sworn to your wife you did not want to be a part of anymore.

  “It doesn’t sound or look to me as if this reflects the portrayal of yourself as someone who was sick of serving Vichy and the Nazis. I mean many of us may have swallowed hard every morning we woke up and held our noses at the thought of who we were working for, but we carried on for our different reasons.

  “However, I didn’t hear of too many of my former colleagues requesting they be reinstated, certainly not as persistently as you did Lafarge. So you see the anomaly here: on the one hand you return after lobbying hard to do so; and then, what a few days later, you leave; and a couple of months on you are on a ship bound for Argentina … If a suspect did this, you too would be suspicious,” said Pinault.

  Lafarge admitted that on the surface it did look suspicious, and he knew he was in a bit of a corner as he really didn’t wish to go back into all the details of the Suchet case again as it could provoke unwished for further enquiries. So he decided to keep it short.

  “I only really wanted to come back so I could bring down Bousquet,” he said.

  That elicited a sharp intake of breath from Pinault, who leant back in the leather-backed chair, took off his glasses and dropped them onto the desk while he rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “So you decided that it was time for a stand to be made and only you were capable of bringing to heel the third most powerful man in the Vichy regime,” said Pinault, his tone one of incredulity.

  Lafarge acknowledged that it sounded far-fetched, but in a story that contained many such twists it was, like them, also the truth.

  “Yes, it is the case. I had the evidence to bring this about and all I needed was to be reinstated, albeit briefly, so I could make it happen. Before you ask, the evidence I had obtained was about his participation after the fact in a jewellery burglary.”

  Pinault laughed, though, it was not one of amusement.

  “This is all so fantastical, but I am obliged to ask you, do you have this evidence still? I am aware of course that you did bring the murder of Marguerite Suchet and the jewellery theft to a successful if bloody conclusion with the deaths of the two criminals – the maid Mathilde and Colonel von Dirlinger. However, Bousquet’s name never arose with regard to them,” said Pinault.

  Lafarge was mightily relieved that the Suchet affair was obviously regarded as closed.

  “I’m afraid that the evidence died with them,” he said sounding almost sorrowful, though he only felt that on behalf of himself.

  “That is indeed a shame, Lafarge. For the moment I am still unconvinced that that was the reason for your desire to return. I am also intrigued as to why you left so quickly and I can only surmise that you saw the way the war was going and that you did not wish to remain and defend yourself.”

  “Well, why don’t you call up Bousquet’s secretary? She was present that day. She had to draw up his letter of resignation which she took down in front of me and Bousquet. She will attest to that,” he said.

  Pinault shook his head.

  “That won’t be possible I’m sorry to say, Lafarge. She is dead. She was seized by some patriotic hotheads, had her head shaved like many other women who were deemed to have collaborated, some horizontally some vertically, and then was executed.

  “Brutal, I know, but there is a real sense out there on the streets of scores to be settled, and it is our job to try and make it legal rather than rudimentary justice.

  “Bousquet can’t help you either, although I find it hard to believe he would do so anyway. He and his family have been spirited away to Germany like the other former ministers and his deputy Leguay, too, is nowhere to be seen. Massu, if you confided in him, is a shadow of the man we once knew and admired. So I really don’t know how you can convince me.”

  Lafarge laughed bitterly, thinking how ironic it was he had gone to all that trouble to get rid of Bousquet – his little gesture of resistance – and now he was being questioned over his motives for demanding his reinstatement and return to Paris.

  He couldn’t even tell Pinault about how he had contravened Bousquet’s orders and set de Chastelain free because he had delivered him into the hands of Petiot, the very man who ranked even above him in importance to his inquisitor at that moment.

  Indeed, racking his brains he knew of only one other person who could vouch for the jewels story and Bousquet and that was the writer and openly collaborationist anti-Semite Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, who was again hardly the sort of witness that would be looked upon sympathetically. That was of course if he was still alive.

  Lafarge had never been much of a chess player – he lacked the patience for it – but he could tell that he had well and truly been checkmated, and what made it worse was it was all of his own making. In being so clever and so damned fanatical in chasing Bousquet he had sown the seeds of his own downfall.

  “Well, sir, I don’t know quite what I can do. I can only give you my word on that being the truth, but I imagine that is not really going to be sufficient.

  “Other than that, in my defence I would like to place on the record that the uniformed officer that I assaulted and had placed under arrest was responsible for shooting dead two young Jewish schoolboys. I also hid at my own great personal risk a Jewish couple, who resided in my apartment building, and who I found to have left when I returned in December last year.”

  Pinault glanced at Lafarge with a surprised look on his face.

  “Do you know what happened to them?” asked Pinault, his tone markedly warmer than it had been at the outset of the interrogation.

  “I don’t know. My concierge Madame Grondon told me that they had left suddenly, but voluntarily. They showed their gratitude to me by leaving some champagne and wine in my apartment,” said Lafarge, who could have done with some of that liquid refreshment right now not only to wash away the taste of the coffee but also to calm his nerves.

  “Indeed. And unlike seemingly everyone else connected to you, Lafarge, is Madame Grondon still breathing and available for interview?” asked Pinault dryly, though suddenly realising the wider implications of what he had just said he raised his hands in apology

  “She is. However, she told me yesterday she was taking advantage of the more relaxed atmosphere to go and visit some relatives in Orléans,” said Lafarge cursing his bad fortune.

  “Hmm. Well, Lafarge, let us hope when I drop you back at your apartment that she has returned and can back up this part of your story,” said Pinault.

  Lafarge took a minute to fully take in what Pinault had said.

  “Drop me back at my apartment? So what I am free to go? I don’t think, though, Madame Grondon will have returned that quickly, sir,” said Lafarge almost incoherently, such was his relief.

  Pinault smiled, Lafarge thought benignly, at him.

 
“No need to rush, Lafarge. Yes, I will drop you back there, but not now. Tomorrow morning. I do have other things to do as I told you. Besides I think a night in the cells will do you good. Certainly I have to be seen to be doing my job and I can’t very well let you just wander out after a three-hour interrogation.”

  Lafarge felt crestfallen, but not wishing Pinault see this he smiled trying to put as brave a face on the situation as possible. Pinault rose and went to the door and ordered Lejeune and Ballack to take the prisoner down to the cells.

  As Lafarge walked out the door and down the corridor with his two gaolers, as they now were, Pinault called out his name. Lafarge turned to see him smiling affably.

  “Don’t worry, Lafarge, all the fellows down there are your former colleagues. You have nothing to worry about from them! Unless of course they were Bousquet loyalists then they will sort you out and we will know, perhaps a bit late, if you were telling the truth!” With that he laughed heartily and stepped inside his office.

  Lafarge didn’t find it the least bit funny and he felt distinctly uneasy about what lay ahead in the hours to come. Indeed he felt like one of those women who were accused of being witches in the Middle Ages and were condemned to the ducking pool: if they drowned they were innocent; if they lived they were witches and burnt at the stake. And this is how it seemed to him Pinault conducted his system of justice.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the end Lafarge spent three days down in the cells, but he emerged alive, though Pinault had not earned his gratitude for that. Stuck down there with a couple of hundred former presumed collaborators – mostly men, though there were around 30 women – had not engendered a sense of unity among them.

  Far from it, everyone appeared to be trying to establish how innocent they were and if needs be learn something incriminating from their fellow prisoners which they could then use somewhat desperately as a bargaining tool with the police.

  There was a hardcore group of former members of the notorious Bonny and Lafont gang, or as they had been known somewhat ludicrously ‘the French Gestapo’, well earned in the respect of their brutal interrogation techniques as Lafarge had experienced at first hand but effectively little more than a bunch of profiteering gangsters.

  Their chiefs Henri Lafont and Pierre Bonny, the latter a former detective who had in a better time before the war been thrown off the force for corruption and served time, were not among them; more’s the pity thought Lafarge.

  These deluded fools still counted on a successful German counter-attack and that they would be liberated. Thus they strutted around and issued threats to their guards about retribution once the Germans returned. The guards just laughed, ran a finger along their throats and wandered off on their rounds.

  Fortunately for Lafarge they didn’t pay him much notice and while he laughed inwardly about their ridiculous optimism he wondered too whether his confidence in Madame Grondon would be equally misplaced. Whatever, he could console himself with the fact that she was definitely of a higher moral order than the women who paced up and down in their cells in the Quai.

  That was not to say they were guilty of anything more than sleeping with the enemy. Even then, had the Nazis really been the enemy for four years when to all intents and purposes there had been an official government of France, no matter that it had not been elected and had openly collaborated with them?

  These questions were too demanding for Lafarge to even start considering the answers to them, especially given his present circumstances. One thing was crystal clear, though, and that was that people were going to have to pay for what had gone on and with the Vichy ministers for the moment safe from the authorities grasp, it was him and the others who had not fled that were likely to pick up the tab.

  The prisoners were pretty nondescript; Lafarge could not have picked many out of the crowds walking around free outside, save for one woman. Communication between the prisoners was not forbidden – there were too few guards to enforce such an order even if it had been in place – but most kept themselves to themselves.

  However, this woman made an immediate impression on Lafarge and despite his recent bereavement he felt a strong desire to learn more about her before either he or she left the Quai.

  He seized his opportunity on the second day of his incarceration as they were served up what passed for food, slops largely, and it said it all the consolation was they were permitted one cup of the disgusting coffee.

  He sidled up to her as they had the coffee poured and offered her one of his last remaining cigarettes.

  Tall, with tousled, sandy blonde hair and a big bosom – or a big balcony as the goons in the cells crudely referred to it – she gratefully accepted with a smile that was gone as quickly as it had appeared. She had an aristocratic and haughty bearing, slightly reminding Lafarge of Mathilde, Suchet’s former maid, whom he had helped to an early grave.

  Shoving aside that uncomfortable memory he concentrated on the still very much alive woman in front of him.

  “I would offer you a cognac but I’m afraid the new police budget obviously doesn’t run to that,” Lafarge said dryly.

  His effort at humour didn’t reach its mark, ‘Miss Haughty’ if anything grimacing at the lameness of the remark.

  “Yes, sorry not very amusing given the circumstances. I’m Gaston Lafarge,” he said while extending his hand.

  ‘Miss Haughty’ didn’t take his hand but eyed him warily with her hazel brown eyes.

  “Aside from being a comedian, and for that effort you should be inside, what are you here for, Monsieur Lafarge?” she asked coolly.

  “Sorry I didn’t catch your name,” replied Lafarge refusing to play her game, for obviously she was someone who preferred to take rather than give or at least that was how she chose to behave in the present conditions she found herself in.

  She puffed out her cheeks in a sign of annoyance at his refusal to answer her question and posing one of his own instead.

  “If you must know my name is Berenice de Cambedessus.So what are you here for?” she asked again.

  Lafarge thought: “Pinault could do with your routine of how to handle an interrogation.”

  “Erm, well I am here because I was a Chief Inspector for a year or so during the Occupation and there being the need for scapegoats, my senior rank would be a nice scalp for them,” he said, without wishing to add much meat to the bone he had tossed her.

  She smiled and looked him up and down as if she was assessing her next meal, which even after two days without a wash Lafarge thought he would taste better than what they had just been fed.

  “And you, Madame, what are you here for?” he asked without waiting for her next question.

  “I made the mistake of sleeping with a German,” she replied.

  “Ah.”

  She eyed him with a piercing gaze that Lafarge hoped didn’t extend to reading his mind, for her response was too flippant to just have been any German she had slept with.

  “It seems a mild offence for you to be confined to a cell, Madame. I take it that it was more than just a casual affair and he was of a higher rank than an ordinary soldier?”

  Suddenly from nowhere she leaned back and let out a laugh, the echoes rebounding off the stone walls and bringing a temporary silence to the other inmates chattering.

  Lafarge felt a little embarrassed and didn’t enjoy being the centre of attention, least of all attracting interest from any of the French Gestapo group.

  Thankfully she stopped laughing and everyone else resumed what they had been doing. He held his hands up to say sorry and made to go back to his cell. However, she indicated that she wanted him to stay.

  “Don’t worry, Madame, I don’t wish to know more. It was just you struck me as being a little bit different to the others here and I wished to get to make your acquaintance. I didn’t mean to cause you any hurt or pry into your life too deeply,” said Lafarge by way of an apology.

  She shrugged her shoulders and smiled at him, w
hile gesturing towards his pocket and asking for another cigarette. He fumbled awkwardly inside his pocket and found one inside the crumpled packet, and lit it for her.

  “We can share it,” she said as she exhaled from her first drag.

  “Sorry?”

  “Well, the way you struggled to get one out of your pocket and the manner in which you inhaled so deeply when you lit it suggests to me, and forgive me as it is you not I that is the policeman, you don’t have many left,” she said.

  It was his turn to laugh.

  “I am impressed, Madame. I would take my hat off to you if I had remembered to bring one with me,” he said chuckling.

  The sudden change in atmosphere – a certain intimacy in as much as that could be described as such amongst a couple of hundred people – seemed to provoke a desire from her to open up and dismiss whatever cloud hung over her.

  “I had a three-year affair with an officer on the Military Governor’s staff,” she said.

  Lafarge nodded and didn’t say anything, his experience as a detective telling him that helped to elicit more information once someone started to talk rather than persistently interrupting unless the person you were interrogating was evidently lying.

  “He lived in the same apartment building as I did in the Rue Vaneau. You know the street?”

  He did know it. It was in the chic seventh arrondissement on the left bank, not far from the Hotel Lutetia where the Abwehr had had their headquarters.

  “Well, my husband, who was an officer in Army Intelligence, had managed to escape and join de Gaulle in England, but I was unable to get out. Thus I lived out a relative life of luxury here in Paris waiting for the moment my husband could return. But I had no intention of consorting with the Boche,” she said.

  “Anyway, that all changed one day when after one of those infernal power cuts I got stuck in the lift. The concierge must have been out for it was not a French voice but a heavily accented German one that answered my cry for help. I wasn’t stuck right between the floors thankfully. I was able to see a pair of shiny boots just above me. This gentleman spoke fluent French and with me talking to his boots and him addressing the top of my head we put together an escape plan.